Experiencing Different Shades of Hue with Surfbort’s “Never Gonna Be What You Want Me to Be”

 

Feeding their growing fanbase less than a year after their sophomore album, Keep on Truckin’, the American-punk-core of Surfbort has released a new single. The next installment of their world domination, “Never Gonna Be What You Want Me to Be,” is a focused performance with a head-down directive opposite to the loud, deliberately messy, and wild record of last year. 

“Never Gonna Be What You Want Me to Be” is a generous outlier for the band. Often, Surfbort tracks explode into spaghetti western shoot-outs with alien forms strouting about. In other words, they’re occasionally weird and alienating. And that’s their goal. 

“Never Gonna Be What You Want Me to Be,” on the other hand, sounds familiar. It pulls its punches, in both the instrumental and vocal layer, to bear likeness with other contemporary punk music. It’s similar to Picasso drawing a normal bull instead of an abstract amalgam of squares and rhombuses. 

The single features a restrained guitar riff coursing the track, and an upbeat drumming that shines where the guitar turns away. The muted tone of the track (relative to Surfbort’s greater discography) parallels the same volatile energy like gray ash with fissures of orange flame within — a near extinguished power still threatening to explode again. 

And that works great for “Never Gonna Be What You Want Me to Be.” The track is the perfect introduction for a listener uninitiated with the band, and can be the gateway drug of even wackier thrillfests of Surfbort and their unique discography.

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Words by JUSTIN CERVANTES

Photos by JAMES DURAN

 
Feature, RecordsJames Duranjustin cervantes, surfbort, james duran, beinabandordie, be in a band or die, never gonna be what you want me to be